Letters to David Irving on
this Website

Unless
correspondents ask us not to, this Website will
post selected letters that it receives and invite
open debate.

Andy
Parson
wonders,
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, if Mr Irving will change anything
in the light of "Skunky" Evans' criticisms.

Above:
Professor Richard "Skunky" Evans. A wealthy
witness

What
motivated "Skunky" Evans?

I OWN some of your books dating back to
the 1980s, but more recently there has been something which
has been niggling away at me.

A
while back I read (in a newspaper, I think it was) that
Professor Richard Evans from Cambridge (right)
has claimed that your books are unreliable, that you have
deliberately distorted facts, that sort of thing. Now I'm
not saying I would automatically believe this, but I'm sure
you would have to agree it does seem to be a very serious
charge to make?

I have looked around your webpages, and I do now
understand that Professor Evans was being paid to have a go
at your work for a court case, so that could put a certain
question mark over what he is saying. But then I found a
copy of his witness-report online, and I read a little bit
of it. It does seem to me that you can't ignore everything
he was saying just because he was being paid up?

Really, my questions are these: 1. Do you accept any of
the specific criticisms that were made? For instance, if you
issue a new edition of your Goebbels
biography, will you now change the account of
Kristallnacht in light of this?

2. I say this with all respect, but if you did accept
that you misrepresented the facts in some places, do you not
think that Professor could have had a point when he said
that this raises questions about ALL
of your books? (From a reader's point of view there does
have to be an element of trust - wouldn't you say?)

I trust you will understand that these are honest
questions on my part and I am certainly not trying to knock
you in any way.

BEFORE attaching too much weight to
what Evans may have written, know two things: he gave his
expert evidence for the defence in the trial of DJC
Irving vs. Penguin Books Ltd. & Lipstadt -- or
rather he sold his expert evidence, for a very
substantial
fee paid by the defence, from
funds provided by what I shall call Lipstadt's "Hollywood
backers", to avoid any charges of anti-semitism.

Evans' fee was eventually over a
quarter of a million pounds. In addition, Penguin Books (as
was their right, of course) signed a very lucrative book
contract with him for, reportedly, a million pounds. Not bad
for a poor Cambridge academic. Dr Faustus would probably
have called it a bargain.

Now, you ask: "For instance, if you
issue a new edition of your
Goebbels autobiography, will you
now change the account of Kristallnacht in light of
this?"

My answer is: Not in the least. (I
will alter just one source-reference number which was
changed since the time I consulted it twenty years ago.)
Read ourindex
on Evansto see what others think
of him, not just I!

You seem not to have appreciated
that it was seven years ago and I have moved on. It was one
battle, in which I appeared alone and unsupported, and into
which the defenders decided to pour $13 million dollars of
what I shall call (see above) Hollywood money. They lost
every penny and called it victory. As for me: One can afford
to lose battles some of the time; but not wars.